CELEBRITIES DO THEIR BIT FOR SARASOTA THEATER COMPLEX

Nearly a dozen well-known actors have converged on the Asolo State Theater in Sarasota this weekend to call attention to a massive fund-raising drive for the $10 million performing arts complex called Asolo Center/The Theatre Inc.

The project, to be paid for in part by $1 million from actor Burt Reynolds and $5.5 million from the state of Florida, will bring together on one Sarasota site the Asolo State Theatre, the Charles MacArthur Center for American Theatre, the Florida State University School of Theatre's master of fine arts program and a new multimedia performance theater called The Theatre Inc.

Film stars Alan Arkin and Charles Durning are among the familiar faces who were scheduled to appear at a Saturday press conference to dramatize the project's need for $3.5 million to be raised in the Sarasota area from businesses, foundations and individual residents.

Arkin has already committed himself to appearing in some productions at The Theatre Inc., said Ricki Lindsay, Asolo Center/The Theatre Inc. director of media relations.

Other actors to appear at the Saturday press conference and to attend today's performances of Twice Around the Park and A Month in the Country at the Asolo State Theater include Dana Andrews, Bob Denver (Gilligan's Island), Isabel Sanford (The Jeffersons) and Henry Polic II (Webster), as well as William Windom, Gail Strickland, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern (Mask), who is a daughter of Ladd and Bruce Dern.

These actors, according to Lindsay, were recruited by Asolo executive director Richard Fallon, who co-founded the Asolo in 1960 and Florida State's theater department in 1973, or by associate executive director Stephen Rothman, who is former executive director of the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, Calif. Several of them, including Polic, Strickland and Reynolds himself, studied at Florida State.

Asolo Center/The Theatre Inc., first announced in early 1984, was the joint brainchild of Reynolds and Fallon, who envision the complex as a place for audiences to see quality theater and for students of drama to learn their craft. The Theatre, which will incorporate the latest in sound and recording equipment, is seen not only as a working 900-seat theater but also as a place where plays could be filmed and videotaped for television and educational purposes.

Florida is third in the nation, behind New York and California, in the number of movies produced in the state, and those involved with Asolo Center/ The Theatre Inc. say they hope that the complex will be able to bring in even a larger share of movie and video money. In the past five years, according to Asolo Center publicity material, the movie and video industries made projects budgeted at more than $366 million in Florida.

Ricki Lindsay said that the group of nationally known actors, who paid for the trip themselves, came to Sarasota to show local business and philanthropic leaders that the entertainment industry is behind Reynolds and Fallon's project.

Of the $3.5 million needed from the Sarasota area, project supporters already have raised more than $500,000. Coast Federal Savings and Loan Co. has given $120,000, Lindsay said; Arvida Corp. has donated $50,000 and First National Bank of Florida $30,000. Several anonymous individuals also have given large sums of money, Lindsay said.

Project officials are negotiating for the theater complex to be built on land west of U.S. Highway 41 and just northeast of the Ringling Museum (which now houses the Asolo State Theater) in Sarasota. The Ringling Museum owns the land.

Plans are for the present Asolo theater, an 18th-century playhouse originally built in Asolo, Italy, to be moved to the new complex and to be expanded slightly from the present 320 seats to 400 seats. Sight lines will be improved and the theater will be made more comfortable for audiences and performers alike, Lindsay said, but the character of the theater is to remain. The date of ground-breaking depends on fund-raising, Lindsay said, although current plans are to break ground for the complex by the end of this year. Construction is likely to take about two years. Architectural contracts have not yet been awarded.